For those of you who want to do some activities with kids here are some of the resources I found to be beneficial. We will be also doing most of the activities from below Inshaa Allaah as we have completed 6 weeks of school and will be having a break from formal school till Eid.

Hajj Exhibitions. Some Museums or Islamic centres have Hajj Exhibitions these days and you can take your kids and learn Inshaa Allaah. If you are in Doha there is an exhibition going on at Moza bint Mohammed Centre in Al- Waab, so check it out if interested.

I hope you will find the above useful and May Allaah make it easy for us to teach our kids the importance of these blessed days and make it easy for us to make the best out of this opportunity. Aameen.

Monday, 15 October 2012

Now that Maimoonah is 5 years old the methodology and ways of her memorising the Qur'aan has changed. And Alhamdulillaah it has taken a good turning point and most of the time is spent on Qur'aan.

She uses the ipod for memorisation. We have downloaded the Qur'aan Majeed Apps for her. It has many features for memorization, like different Qaaris, repeating soorah or aayah, book marks for soorahs, translation of the meaning of the Qur'aan Aayah by Aayah.

I have also printed out little cards that sis Fehmida did for me which is also now available here for downloading. (so far you will get only the soorahs for Juzz Amma) This is mainly for revision.

So this is how it goes.

Qur'aan/Hifdhl is part of our school Time Table, so it has one work-box.

Each day I place about 4 or 5 cards with old soorahs for revision and the card with the new soorah in the work-box.

She will listen to the soorahs for the day and when she is ready, she will call me to check her memorization of the old soorahs.

She must listen to the new soorah 5 times during this session.

When she starts a new soorah, first I will recite to her and then she will listen to the Qaari.

Then we read the Tafseer of that Soorah.

After few days she would tell me now she has memorised the new soorah and she is ready to be checked.

I check her memorization and if it satisfactory I stick the sticker on the Hifdhl Shelf.

This whole process takes about 45 minutes to 1 hour every day or sometimes more.

Except for reading the Tafseer and checking, the rest is done independently by her.

Later in the evenings after we finish school, she will listen to all the soorahs she has memorised while she is busy with playing, or some days she would listen and recite with the Qaari while she in engaged with her own work.

Also sometimes while she is listening to the soorahs she would read the translation while the aayahs are being recited. This way she has learnt the meaning of many Arabic words and when she recites she knows what she is reciting. This has become a great plus point with the Mercy of Allaah. Every now and then she would talk about an Aayah and tell me the meaning and will start asking questions about it which will lead to a fruitful discussion.

This is how it is going so far and one thing to always keep in mind is that with age and maturity things change, and if you had read my previous posts of Qur'aan you will know the stages and phases Maimoonah went through with this journey, where she used to have melt downs as well as losing self confidence to recite and memorise, and I had to stop Qur'aan completely with her for about 6 months fearing that she would start hating the book of Allaah, Allaah forbid.

And this is something that happens to other kids too as many sisters have written to me with regard to this and asked advise. Each child is unique and forcing anything onto them is going to be disaster, especially the book of Allaah. We need to handle each child accordingly and our goal should be to make the child love the Book of Allaah. Memorising the Qur'aan in the early ages is the best but we got to be careful as to how we are doing this without stressing the child.

Lots and lots of Duas are the main key to success Inshaa Allaah. And then when a child listens to the audio again and again the memorisation comes easily and effectively without any stress Inshaa Allaah.

I ask Allaah to make this task easy for all of us and make our children love His Book and act upon it till the end. Aameen.

We used the experiment of how dish-washing liquid help things clean, to fill in our scientific inquiry worksheet. First we asked the question, predicted the answer recorded them. Then observed by doing the experiment and answered the question.

Here are some of the activities she did for Animals and Plants and differences and similarities from CGP books.

She also wrote the differences between the Living things and the Non Living Things. Then we drew a Venn diagram and wrote the similarities and the differences between human and animal. She came up with all these on her own.

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As usual studying about plants once again was pretty interesting. We together found many aayahs from the Qur'aan where Allaah says about the growth of plants and she chose to write the Aayah from Soorah An'aam and Soorah Abasa. When I wrote down the English meaning of the aayaahs of Abasa she was reciting the Arabic to me. She also named and coloured the parts of the plants.

We learnt what roots and stems do. and we did this experiment to see and record how roots take in water. We used a carrot and put it into a glass and marked the water level. Each day for five days she measured the water levels and recorded. At the end of the fifth day we also noticed water has decreased and Alhamdulillaah the carrot had leaves on top, she was so surprised.

We learnt the life cycle of a plant.

Also this lesson coincided with a play group she got to attend and they had to paint their own pots and plant basil seeds. Allhamdulillaah. She managed to plant and we recorded the growth on the book. Abi taught her how plants use their senses and how to be kind to the plants. She has taken the whole responsibility of taking care of her plant. And here are the stages of her plant and this is what she recorded.

This books is one her favourite books by one of her favourite authors, non other than our dear sister Umm An Nu'man and one of her pals gave this book to her sometime ago.

She just loves this book and when she planted the seed, from that very day she started making dua so much up until now asking Allaah to make her plant grow. She was so happy to see it growing and she knew for sure it was only Allaah who was making it grow. This books is such a wonderful book that teaches children about plants and that indeed with all what the plants need to grow, it will only grow by the will of Allaah. As of today basils are like this Maashaa Allaah.

A dear sister from Sri Lanka sent Maimoonah this little microscope as a gift and we used it to see the cells of the leaves. She was thrilled. We used the Usborne First Science Encyclopedia and learnt about cells and how leaves make food.

This is a great encyclopedia and it has some internet links for each page where you will find interactive video clips, games, presentation and pictures that go along with it. It is indeed a nice way to learn and we enjoy science this way. Now that she is grown she understands many things and watches some clips that make sense to her. Of course some pages have music and we mute and look at the pictures.

We also watched this and understood the food chain and discussed about the wonderful perfect creation of Allaah and she in fact was saying an aayah that I cannot remember now which means something like "So o man, why are you careless about your Lord?". Indeed children are with Fitra, and I was amazed how she could quickly connect things.

So we watched this and learnt how leaves make food and what happens to this process during fall and winter.

Science is Maashaa Allaah interesting so far.Now we are learning about Human Body another fascinating creation of Allaah. Inshaa Allaah will update when we finish.

Saturday, 6 October 2012

Also I had these pictures of illustration based on Shaikh Naasiruddeen Al Albaani’s (rahimahullaah) book “Sifatus Salaatun nabi”. We printed and pasted on a board.

We spoke about salaah in general, the times of salaah and the names for each of them. Then I explained that salaah is a great way to remember Allaah and it should be done calmly and with full concentration.

We went through each position from standing to tasleem. Then I placed the prayer rug behind the sutra. Explained to her about the sutra and it's importance.

She unrolled the prayer mat..

Then looking at the board where we pasted each position, I demonstrated to her each one and asked her to name the position and show me “The way our Messenger of Allaah prayed”. Masha Allaah it was indeed a delight to watch her trying to perfect each position and how much calm and quiet she was through out this activity, subhanallaah.

So here are the different positions….

Takbir..

Rukoo

Sajda

Sitting in between

Tashahhud

Tasleem

Finally rolling prayer mat..

She really enjoyed this activity and next day was Jummah. Abi was well pleased with her when he saw the photographs and wanted to take her for Jummaah. She was absolutely thrilled. And masha Allaah she listened to the Khutbah and prayed with me exactly the way I taught her the each position masha Allaah. And she was also happy that the Imaam recited the soorahs she knows now masha Allaah.

We are almost done with this week’s curriculum. Will post the summary soon Insha Allaah.

Most of the pics were taken at the Barzan Olympic Park at Umm Salaal Ali in Qatar. Its a nice family park Maashaa Allaah. You get a separate prayer area, clean toilets, toddlers play area, kids play area, a fountain, and lovely green park as well as some rides for the kids and family. Nice place to have a picnic and have some family time.

Monday, 1 October 2012

We are using the Nelson International Mathematics Books and MEP Year 1 for this year. So far within this 3 weeks we have covered a lot Alhamdulillaah without any stress.

Maimoonah loves the Nelson Maths books and finished Book 1A just in one week and Book 1B is almost done. Of Course the activities are pretty easy for her so far. She likes the illustrations and methods on this book, very very child friendly and she finishes them fast. she has got used to using her timer where she sets the time for 5 or 10 minutes and tries to finish the activities before the timer makes a noise. She really enjoys this and finishes maths pretty fast.

I thought she would feel bored to do MEP after getting used to the Nelson, but Alhamdulillaah now she is doing the MEP all by herself too and she uses the timer for that as well. So everyday we do from both the books.

Now she is able to understand many of the concepts on MEP that she could not fathom last year. I guess age plays a big role in every stage of the development.

So far some new things we have covered are summarised below.

Numbers Ascending and Descending Order

Tens and Units

Pour and Measure
This was a big hit. We used different containers to measure water and recorded. She learnt about ml and litres.

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